Showing posts with label Randy David. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Randy David. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2016
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Amman Futures Pyramid Scam
Bring at last 2 newspaper clippings on 29th, 30th November. Subject matter is about the recent Amman Futures Pyramid scam. In a group of 5, discuss the article and submit a paper on why people get duped with this kind of proposal. One page only on bulletized format. All in word-processing format. Short bond paper. Write your group members, you section and schedule. Clippings will be submitted. State the date of your clippings and source.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Forgetfulness a cult.
Moving on: the cult of forgetfulness
By: Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:01 am | Sunday, July 31st, 2011
Memory is so burdensome to many of us that moving on and not looking back has become a kind of value in itself. The argument is that responding to present challenges is demanding enough, we should not compound it by dredging the past. This attitude, so prevalent in our culture, typically rides on the religious notion of forgiveness as forgetting and freeing oneself of a grudge. I argue that while a sense of forgiveness may lead us to disregard a wrong, forgiving does not mean forgetting.
There are two reasons why we should remember, and they are particularly relevant to our context. The first is quite obvious: many of our present problems are practically the same ones we encountered in the past. They recur because we have not taken them seriously enough – meaning, we do not use them as occasions to affirm our basic values, laws, and standards. We are content to catch the small fry hired by the real culprits. Because of the latter’s power, we stop short of calling them to account, or of punishing them. We seldom take the trouble of determining the nature of these problems so as to prevent their recurrence.
The second reason for remembering is that where there is no recognition of wrongdoing, or where there is no remorse and atonement, there is no duty to forgive. The offense is bound to be repeated, if not by the same person, by others who are emboldened by the community’s lack of will to enforce its laws. But, more than this, when a wrongdoing is unacknowledged and altogether blotted out, and the wrongdoer survives in memory without stigma, cynicism displaces idealism. The community loses its capacity to judge and to distribute social esteem. Before long, the unpunished wrongdoer may even come back to claim esteem. In our forgetfulness, we then wonder why, in the first place, it was denied him.
In his book “The ethics of memory,” the philosopher Avishai Margalit wrote of forgiveness in these terms: “The central metaphor is not erasure but, rather, returning. The sinner who has become distanced from God because of his sin now returns to Him. The first step in correcting the wrongdoing is not God’s forgiveness but the sinner’s act of returning to God.”
This is accomplished, Margalit writes, first and foremost by the offender showing remorse. Why is remorse so crucial to the return of the offender to the fold, and to the reconciliation between the wrongdoer and the community that forgives?
Margalit’s insight is instructive: “Remorse offers us a non-magical way of undoing the past. Although it is impossible to undo what has been done, since the past cannot be changed, it is possible to change our interpretation of the past. By expressing remorse the offender presents himself in a new light, a light that can be projected into the past. His ability to feel remorse attests that he is not basically evil, even if the act that he performed was abominable. The sinner does not deny the badness of his deed, as then he would not be expressing remorse, but his very assumption of responsibility for the deed is supposed to create a rift between the act and the doer. Thus, an offender can be forgiven even if the offense cannot be forgotten.”
Let us apply this insight to two of our past presidents, Ferdinand Marcos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who were accused of committing acts considered abominable by society but were never punished. Marcos died in exile before the cases filed against him could be heard and decided. He was defiant till the end and never admitted committing any wrongdoing. A large portion of his wealth was nonetheless pronounced ill-gotten and was confiscated by the government.
A US court declared his regime guilty of human rights violations and awarded compensation to the victims. But the rest of his family had no problem returning to the country from exile after his death. His wife Imelda is now a member of the House of Representatives, his oldest daughter Imee, the governor of Ilocos Norte, and his son Ferdinand Jr., a senator of the republic. Feeling perhaps vindicated by electoral success, they now want a hero’s burial for the former dictator. There is not even a hint of remorse here, no confession, and certainly no atonement. By demanding a hero’s burial for Marcos, they want the nation, in effect, to confess that it had made a mistake in deposing him as president. That is what moving on means in this context.
Gloria Arroyo’s case is slightly different. After claiming the presidency a second time on the back of a highly-disputed electoral outcome, GMA did everything to cover up the criminal acts that went into ensuring her dubious victory at the polls.
The issue came to a head in mid-2005 when recordings of conversations between election operators and politicians, including Arroyo, surfaced. The “Hello Garci” tapes plunged the government into a crisis and prompted the carefully crafted “I-am-sorry” statement of GMA on television. Was this a gesture of remorse that merits reciprocal forgiveness? I think not. This was an attempt at evasion, not atonement. By re-describing her act as merely “a lapse in judgment,” Arroyo sought to decriminalize it. Her subsequent statements were a virtual denial of her participation in these taped conversations.
Now that witnesses have come forward, and the trail of evidence and testimony seems to be leading to the doorstep of the Arroyos, we again hear that tiresome refrain about moving on. It is not forgiveness they seek, but, rather, forgetfulness.
* * *
public.lives@gmail.com
By: Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1:01 am | Sunday, July 31st, 2011
Memory is so burdensome to many of us that moving on and not looking back has become a kind of value in itself. The argument is that responding to present challenges is demanding enough, we should not compound it by dredging the past. This attitude, so prevalent in our culture, typically rides on the religious notion of forgiveness as forgetting and freeing oneself of a grudge. I argue that while a sense of forgiveness may lead us to disregard a wrong, forgiving does not mean forgetting.
There are two reasons why we should remember, and they are particularly relevant to our context. The first is quite obvious: many of our present problems are practically the same ones we encountered in the past. They recur because we have not taken them seriously enough – meaning, we do not use them as occasions to affirm our basic values, laws, and standards. We are content to catch the small fry hired by the real culprits. Because of the latter’s power, we stop short of calling them to account, or of punishing them. We seldom take the trouble of determining the nature of these problems so as to prevent their recurrence.
The second reason for remembering is that where there is no recognition of wrongdoing, or where there is no remorse and atonement, there is no duty to forgive. The offense is bound to be repeated, if not by the same person, by others who are emboldened by the community’s lack of will to enforce its laws. But, more than this, when a wrongdoing is unacknowledged and altogether blotted out, and the wrongdoer survives in memory without stigma, cynicism displaces idealism. The community loses its capacity to judge and to distribute social esteem. Before long, the unpunished wrongdoer may even come back to claim esteem. In our forgetfulness, we then wonder why, in the first place, it was denied him.
In his book “The ethics of memory,” the philosopher Avishai Margalit wrote of forgiveness in these terms: “The central metaphor is not erasure but, rather, returning. The sinner who has become distanced from God because of his sin now returns to Him. The first step in correcting the wrongdoing is not God’s forgiveness but the sinner’s act of returning to God.”
This is accomplished, Margalit writes, first and foremost by the offender showing remorse. Why is remorse so crucial to the return of the offender to the fold, and to the reconciliation between the wrongdoer and the community that forgives?
Margalit’s insight is instructive: “Remorse offers us a non-magical way of undoing the past. Although it is impossible to undo what has been done, since the past cannot be changed, it is possible to change our interpretation of the past. By expressing remorse the offender presents himself in a new light, a light that can be projected into the past. His ability to feel remorse attests that he is not basically evil, even if the act that he performed was abominable. The sinner does not deny the badness of his deed, as then he would not be expressing remorse, but his very assumption of responsibility for the deed is supposed to create a rift between the act and the doer. Thus, an offender can be forgiven even if the offense cannot be forgotten.”
Let us apply this insight to two of our past presidents, Ferdinand Marcos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who were accused of committing acts considered abominable by society but were never punished. Marcos died in exile before the cases filed against him could be heard and decided. He was defiant till the end and never admitted committing any wrongdoing. A large portion of his wealth was nonetheless pronounced ill-gotten and was confiscated by the government.
A US court declared his regime guilty of human rights violations and awarded compensation to the victims. But the rest of his family had no problem returning to the country from exile after his death. His wife Imelda is now a member of the House of Representatives, his oldest daughter Imee, the governor of Ilocos Norte, and his son Ferdinand Jr., a senator of the republic. Feeling perhaps vindicated by electoral success, they now want a hero’s burial for the former dictator. There is not even a hint of remorse here, no confession, and certainly no atonement. By demanding a hero’s burial for Marcos, they want the nation, in effect, to confess that it had made a mistake in deposing him as president. That is what moving on means in this context.
Gloria Arroyo’s case is slightly different. After claiming the presidency a second time on the back of a highly-disputed electoral outcome, GMA did everything to cover up the criminal acts that went into ensuring her dubious victory at the polls.
The issue came to a head in mid-2005 when recordings of conversations between election operators and politicians, including Arroyo, surfaced. The “Hello Garci” tapes plunged the government into a crisis and prompted the carefully crafted “I-am-sorry” statement of GMA on television. Was this a gesture of remorse that merits reciprocal forgiveness? I think not. This was an attempt at evasion, not atonement. By re-describing her act as merely “a lapse in judgment,” Arroyo sought to decriminalize it. Her subsequent statements were a virtual denial of her participation in these taped conversations.
Now that witnesses have come forward, and the trail of evidence and testimony seems to be leading to the doorstep of the Arroyos, we again hear that tiresome refrain about moving on. It is not forgiveness they seek, but, rather, forgetfulness.
* * *
public.lives@gmail.com
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Mired in Poverty
PUBLIC LIVES
November 11, 2010
Randy David
Mired in poverty
When families are mired in poverty, it’s the children – in all their innocence – who become the principal victims. Their future is at once compromised. They grow up without proper nourishment, their young bodies battered by disease and parasites against which they have little protection. Their schooling, even if free, becomes a haphazard experience, marked by interruptions beyond their control. Often they’re too hungry to walk to school, or too busy foraging for food that will tide the family over till the next day. Food is always the first priority under these circumstances.
This picture of Philippine poverty, so common in media reports, has become almost a cliché. Endless repetition blunts its urgency. We all learn to move on without being bothered.
It is different when the picture shows people you have known. I know one such family in these dire circumstances. I have become their accidental benefactor, and though I have reluctantly embraced this role, I’m still not certain that I can help change the course of their lives. But it’s worth a try.
Rosalie and Dodoy married even before either one of them had a steady job -- of course. If you’re young and did not finish grade school, you can’t expect to land a stable job in the provinces. And if you’re unemployed, chances are you’ll find yourself starting a family before you’re ready. Theoretically, we can call people to account for the decisions they make in life. But the word “decision” seems inapplicable to people in Rosalie and Dodoy’s circumstances. It is more accurate, I think, to say they’re “thrown” into a way of life they did not exactly choose, living a pre-ordained script they’re likely to pass on to their own children.
They were migrants from Bicol. Bringing with him his young bride, Dodoy moved to Bataan to live with his parents’ family. His father, a caretaker in a small farm owned by my brother, had settled there with his wife and their entire brood of 10 other children. This was about 15 years ago. Rosalie came to work as a house help in my mother’s home in Quezon City, going back to Bataan once a month, while her husband took on odd jobs in construction sites. Before long, she became pregnant with their first baby, and so she had to quit working. I did not see them again after many years later.
The couple, with two kids in tow, approached me one day while I was planting some mango saplings in the 1.5 hectare lot I keep on the slopes of Mt. Malasimbo. I didn’t recognize them until Rosalie introduced herself as my late mother’s former maid. They asked if I had someone to look after the mango farm. I smiled, thinking that the place, with 30 mango saplings, was hardly a farm. Rosalie has always been the confident one; she did most of the talking. She asked if I would let them put up a small shack on the property and use the space between the mangoes and the coconuts to plant seasonal vegetables. Of course, I said without hesitation. In return, they promised to watch over the trees I planted.
That’s how I found myself “thrown” into a relationship of dependence and patronage for which I was neither psychologically nor ideologically prepared. First, they needed a small financial assistance to complete the tiny shack they were building. They asked to “borrow” money, offering to pay it back in kind or in labor. I gave them the money and called it a contribution. Then they needed pesticides, fertilizer, and balls of string for the vegetable patch they cleared. I gave them what they needed and this time I said it was a loan. Harvest time came and what they earned from the sale of their produce was less than half of the money they owed. I accepted a few bunches of the string beans they brought to me in payment, but I didn’t have the heart to take the cash. I advised them to use the money instead to plant corn and mongo.
The kids came one after the other, until there were four additional mouths to feed. The eldest, a boy of 14, is in high school. The two girls in between are in grade school. The youngest, an 18-month-old boy, is still feeding from his mother’s breast. For the last five years, I have been giving Rosalie a monthly allowance of P1000 to help with the food and school needs of the children. In search of regular work, Dodoy left for Manila, but what he earned in the big city as an “extra” tricycle driver was barely enough for his own needs.
One summer, the couple explored the possibility of going back to Bicol and live with Rosalie’s parents. Their visit didn’t last more than a month; they could not endure the hunger and deprivation in her father’s home. It was worse than they suspected.
Last month, Rosalie came to see me. Calmly, this frail woman of about 35 and mother to four young children told me that her husband had left her. She wanted to know if they could continue to stay on the property. I assured her it was no problem with me, but I inquired how she intended to feed her family. She said she earned a little from buying and selling at the nearby market. She just wanted to make sure, she said, that her children’s schooling would not be interrupted, and that her eldest boy at least would finish high school. That was her big dream. I was stunned by her staunch belief in the miracle of education and by her fierce determination to carry on without her husband.
It was then that I began to reconsider my initial skepticism about the government’s conditional cash transfer program. Out there, there are millions of other Filipino children equally mired in poverty who deserve society’s protection, whose future should not be compromised by their elders’ inadequacy, misfortune, or irresponsibility.
public.lives@gmail.com
November 11, 2010
Randy David
Mired in poverty
When families are mired in poverty, it’s the children – in all their innocence – who become the principal victims. Their future is at once compromised. They grow up without proper nourishment, their young bodies battered by disease and parasites against which they have little protection. Their schooling, even if free, becomes a haphazard experience, marked by interruptions beyond their control. Often they’re too hungry to walk to school, or too busy foraging for food that will tide the family over till the next day. Food is always the first priority under these circumstances.
This picture of Philippine poverty, so common in media reports, has become almost a cliché. Endless repetition blunts its urgency. We all learn to move on without being bothered.
It is different when the picture shows people you have known. I know one such family in these dire circumstances. I have become their accidental benefactor, and though I have reluctantly embraced this role, I’m still not certain that I can help change the course of their lives. But it’s worth a try.
Rosalie and Dodoy married even before either one of them had a steady job -- of course. If you’re young and did not finish grade school, you can’t expect to land a stable job in the provinces. And if you’re unemployed, chances are you’ll find yourself starting a family before you’re ready. Theoretically, we can call people to account for the decisions they make in life. But the word “decision” seems inapplicable to people in Rosalie and Dodoy’s circumstances. It is more accurate, I think, to say they’re “thrown” into a way of life they did not exactly choose, living a pre-ordained script they’re likely to pass on to their own children.
They were migrants from Bicol. Bringing with him his young bride, Dodoy moved to Bataan to live with his parents’ family. His father, a caretaker in a small farm owned by my brother, had settled there with his wife and their entire brood of 10 other children. This was about 15 years ago. Rosalie came to work as a house help in my mother’s home in Quezon City, going back to Bataan once a month, while her husband took on odd jobs in construction sites. Before long, she became pregnant with their first baby, and so she had to quit working. I did not see them again after many years later.
The couple, with two kids in tow, approached me one day while I was planting some mango saplings in the 1.5 hectare lot I keep on the slopes of Mt. Malasimbo. I didn’t recognize them until Rosalie introduced herself as my late mother’s former maid. They asked if I had someone to look after the mango farm. I smiled, thinking that the place, with 30 mango saplings, was hardly a farm. Rosalie has always been the confident one; she did most of the talking. She asked if I would let them put up a small shack on the property and use the space between the mangoes and the coconuts to plant seasonal vegetables. Of course, I said without hesitation. In return, they promised to watch over the trees I planted.
That’s how I found myself “thrown” into a relationship of dependence and patronage for which I was neither psychologically nor ideologically prepared. First, they needed a small financial assistance to complete the tiny shack they were building. They asked to “borrow” money, offering to pay it back in kind or in labor. I gave them the money and called it a contribution. Then they needed pesticides, fertilizer, and balls of string for the vegetable patch they cleared. I gave them what they needed and this time I said it was a loan. Harvest time came and what they earned from the sale of their produce was less than half of the money they owed. I accepted a few bunches of the string beans they brought to me in payment, but I didn’t have the heart to take the cash. I advised them to use the money instead to plant corn and mongo.
The kids came one after the other, until there were four additional mouths to feed. The eldest, a boy of 14, is in high school. The two girls in between are in grade school. The youngest, an 18-month-old boy, is still feeding from his mother’s breast. For the last five years, I have been giving Rosalie a monthly allowance of P1000 to help with the food and school needs of the children. In search of regular work, Dodoy left for Manila, but what he earned in the big city as an “extra” tricycle driver was barely enough for his own needs.
One summer, the couple explored the possibility of going back to Bicol and live with Rosalie’s parents. Their visit didn’t last more than a month; they could not endure the hunger and deprivation in her father’s home. It was worse than they suspected.
Last month, Rosalie came to see me. Calmly, this frail woman of about 35 and mother to four young children told me that her husband had left her. She wanted to know if they could continue to stay on the property. I assured her it was no problem with me, but I inquired how she intended to feed her family. She said she earned a little from buying and selling at the nearby market. She just wanted to make sure, she said, that her children’s schooling would not be interrupted, and that her eldest boy at least would finish high school. That was her big dream. I was stunned by her staunch belief in the miracle of education and by her fierce determination to carry on without her husband.
It was then that I began to reconsider my initial skepticism about the government’s conditional cash transfer program. Out there, there are millions of other Filipino children equally mired in poverty who deserve society’s protection, whose future should not be compromised by their elders’ inadequacy, misfortune, or irresponsibility.
public.lives@gmail.com
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Systemic dysfunction of society
PUBLIC LIVES
September 2, 2010
Randy David
Leadership in a transitional society
In our society, when something goes wrong, people ask: who’s to blame? Remedy is instantly sought in the replacement of officials rather than in the review of systems. In other societies, the prior question that is asked is: what went wrong? Only after this is answered do heads roll. The focus on personalities is not something unique to us, nor is it inherent in Filipino culture. It is just what differentiates a traditional from a modern society.
The fact that we are in transition only makes our situation a bit more confusing. We have modern systems in various domains of our national life, but these are easily trumped by the traditional authority of powerful and influential figures. The latter typically claim all the credit for successes. But, when failures and breakdowns occur, they quickly point to their limited responsibility under modern rules.
Take our political system. We tend to highlight the deficiencies of leaders, forgetting that they themselves are creations of the same traditional system in which we all play a role and which we help reproduce in our daily lives. In quest of solutions, we like to cast around for heroic individuals who can redeem the deficiencies of an entire society. As a result, our elections become nothing more than exercises in finding someone we can trust at any given moment, and later blame for all the dysfunctions of our society.
Our politicians not only willingly play this game but indeed they encourage it, for that’s how they win votes. Instead of concrete plans and programs of government, they concentrate on fundamental contrasts in personal virtues and endowments. In all this, the systemic character of persistent social problems – poverty, corruption, social injustice, incompetence, etc. – is effectively concealed. And so when these problems explode in our face, the first thing we do is, again, find someone to blame. Sometimes, sensing that the blame should not be heaped on a few people, we go through episodes of collective breast-beating in atonement for our moral failings.
Yet these problems are largely the outcome of structural failings. Catharsis and atonement alone will not make them go away. The governance of a society like ours has become an incredibly complex business. We have not only greatly multiplied in number. Our people’s experiences, values, and beliefs have also become extremely diverse. Our links to the rest of the world have likewise phenomenally expanded. No longer are we merely responsible for ourselves and to ourselves, we are today also answerable to many other peoples around the world whose lives ours are intertwined with ours.
The old ways of governing, dependent upon the performance of strong, charismatic, or extraordinary leaders at the top, are no longer adequate for managing such complexity. They belong to simple hierarchical societies. Modern problems require differentiated institutional systems and reliable professional response. The era of the heroic individual whose direct personal intervention is demanded in every crisis is long past. Modern impersonal systems are built precisely as a way of reducing complexity. They will not work properly, however, when their operation can, at any point, be overridden by the personal decisions of lone rangers.
In a previous column on the hostage crisis that led to the tragic death of eight Hong Kong tourists, I noted that the bungled effort to rescue the hostages could not be ascribed solely to incompetence or lack of equipment on the part of the police. The entire effort seemed marked by “institutional paralysis.” A system was in place for dealing with hostage situations. But, from what we now know, it appears that the police officers in charge were unable to fully activate this system and confidently assert their authority in the presence of the many big shots that were interfering in the operation. In the end, no one in particular was in charge.
We would be mistaken to think that this systemic problem will go away by simply dismissing people ahead of a full report of what happened. This may appease some people, but it will only hide the larger institutional crisis that is upon us. This crisis did not grow overnight, and it will not be solved overnight. Indeed it was allowed to fester over the years, providing the setting for quick fixes like martial law and people power revolutions. At every turning point, the ensuing change never went deep enough to disturb the basic framework of a patronage-driven hierarchical society. It is this whole system that is today in crisis.
Tragic events like Typhoon Ondoy, the Maguindanao massacre, and the hostage crisis at the Quirino grandstand have one thing in common – they all lay bare the dysfunctionality of our existing social system. They underscore the need to review and strengthen our institutions, or, at the very least, free them from the grip of traditional patrons and authority figures. The structural solutions will increasingly become clear to us in time, if we can resist the tendency to moralize and personalize everything.
Perhaps it is a good thing that despite the uniquely personal circumstances that thrust him to the presidency, President Aquino has kept a very low profile. He speaks plainly and almost diffidently, and, instead of projecting an aura of charismatic confidence, is quick to admit lapses. Given the existing political culture, this may not be the most astute demeanor for a new president to project. But it is the best setting in which to strengthen institutions.
public.lives@gmail.com
September 2, 2010
Randy David
Leadership in a transitional society
In our society, when something goes wrong, people ask: who’s to blame? Remedy is instantly sought in the replacement of officials rather than in the review of systems. In other societies, the prior question that is asked is: what went wrong? Only after this is answered do heads roll. The focus on personalities is not something unique to us, nor is it inherent in Filipino culture. It is just what differentiates a traditional from a modern society.
The fact that we are in transition only makes our situation a bit more confusing. We have modern systems in various domains of our national life, but these are easily trumped by the traditional authority of powerful and influential figures. The latter typically claim all the credit for successes. But, when failures and breakdowns occur, they quickly point to their limited responsibility under modern rules.
Take our political system. We tend to highlight the deficiencies of leaders, forgetting that they themselves are creations of the same traditional system in which we all play a role and which we help reproduce in our daily lives. In quest of solutions, we like to cast around for heroic individuals who can redeem the deficiencies of an entire society. As a result, our elections become nothing more than exercises in finding someone we can trust at any given moment, and later blame for all the dysfunctions of our society.
Our politicians not only willingly play this game but indeed they encourage it, for that’s how they win votes. Instead of concrete plans and programs of government, they concentrate on fundamental contrasts in personal virtues and endowments. In all this, the systemic character of persistent social problems – poverty, corruption, social injustice, incompetence, etc. – is effectively concealed. And so when these problems explode in our face, the first thing we do is, again, find someone to blame. Sometimes, sensing that the blame should not be heaped on a few people, we go through episodes of collective breast-beating in atonement for our moral failings.
Yet these problems are largely the outcome of structural failings. Catharsis and atonement alone will not make them go away. The governance of a society like ours has become an incredibly complex business. We have not only greatly multiplied in number. Our people’s experiences, values, and beliefs have also become extremely diverse. Our links to the rest of the world have likewise phenomenally expanded. No longer are we merely responsible for ourselves and to ourselves, we are today also answerable to many other peoples around the world whose lives ours are intertwined with ours.
The old ways of governing, dependent upon the performance of strong, charismatic, or extraordinary leaders at the top, are no longer adequate for managing such complexity. They belong to simple hierarchical societies. Modern problems require differentiated institutional systems and reliable professional response. The era of the heroic individual whose direct personal intervention is demanded in every crisis is long past. Modern impersonal systems are built precisely as a way of reducing complexity. They will not work properly, however, when their operation can, at any point, be overridden by the personal decisions of lone rangers.
In a previous column on the hostage crisis that led to the tragic death of eight Hong Kong tourists, I noted that the bungled effort to rescue the hostages could not be ascribed solely to incompetence or lack of equipment on the part of the police. The entire effort seemed marked by “institutional paralysis.” A system was in place for dealing with hostage situations. But, from what we now know, it appears that the police officers in charge were unable to fully activate this system and confidently assert their authority in the presence of the many big shots that were interfering in the operation. In the end, no one in particular was in charge.
We would be mistaken to think that this systemic problem will go away by simply dismissing people ahead of a full report of what happened. This may appease some people, but it will only hide the larger institutional crisis that is upon us. This crisis did not grow overnight, and it will not be solved overnight. Indeed it was allowed to fester over the years, providing the setting for quick fixes like martial law and people power revolutions. At every turning point, the ensuing change never went deep enough to disturb the basic framework of a patronage-driven hierarchical society. It is this whole system that is today in crisis.
Tragic events like Typhoon Ondoy, the Maguindanao massacre, and the hostage crisis at the Quirino grandstand have one thing in common – they all lay bare the dysfunctionality of our existing social system. They underscore the need to review and strengthen our institutions, or, at the very least, free them from the grip of traditional patrons and authority figures. The structural solutions will increasingly become clear to us in time, if we can resist the tendency to moralize and personalize everything.
Perhaps it is a good thing that despite the uniquely personal circumstances that thrust him to the presidency, President Aquino has kept a very low profile. He speaks plainly and almost diffidently, and, instead of projecting an aura of charismatic confidence, is quick to admit lapses. Given the existing political culture, this may not be the most astute demeanor for a new president to project. But it is the best setting in which to strengthen institutions.
public.lives@gmail.com
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Language matters
PUBLIC LIVES
August 19, 2010
Randy David
Language matters
It is that time of the year when we are prompted to revisit language issues in our society. In what language should we educate our children? What language should the government use to communicate with our people? What language should the courts in our country use? Is the bilingual policy that makes Filipino and English the official media of communication and instruction serving the national purpose? Are we doing enough to develop and enrich Filipino as the national language, as mandated by the Constitution? These issues have remained contentious and unresolved:
Even as languages evolve on their own, nations find themselves having to choose which languages best work for them as they pursue specific goals and purposes. As with persons, language preference ultimately mirrors a nation’s hierarchy of values. In the post-colonial years, especially in those societies marked by cultural diversity, the designation of a national language was thought crucial to the task of nation-building and political integration. Today, nations that have premised their growth on being able to ride the tide of globalization find little need to develop their own languages. They not only turn to English as the language of modernity; they also want to make it the lingua franca of their people.
This brings instant rewards to individuals who seek careers in the modern sector of the economy or in the global labor market. But for the majority who remain in the country, the costs are immense. Education becomes an alienating experience for schoolchildren, who cannot use their own language to create and access knowledge. Social inequalities are exacerbated. As English becomes a marker of class, a mechanism of exclusion, local languages are relegated to the margins of public discourse. Perhaps, most important of all, as we lose the use of our languages, we also break with our own basic orientations as a people. This is especially a problem for the English-speaking Filipino intelligentsia who find that increasingly they can neither understand nor communicate with their own people.
Recent research on the connection between language and ways of seeing and thinking provides new evidence for the thesis that language is not just a carrier but a shaper of thought. These studies, echoing the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, shift the analysis from the nature of the mind to the uses of language.
In an article for the Wall Street Journal (07/23/10), Dr. Lera Boroditsky, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, discusses recent field experiments that show how language structures not just the way we see but the way we solve problems and accumulate knowledge about the world. This is not a new idea at all. But Dr. Boroditsky has come up with new material to prove the point.
Language, she argues, shapes our notions of space, time, and causality. Such notions are not the same in all languages. “About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space.” Dr. Boroditsky and another colleague went to Australia to study the Pormpuraaw, an aboriginal group whose languages have no “terms like ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, ‘There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” This astounding precision in the language for depicting space allows people like the Pormpuraaws to “build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions.”
Does the way we talk about space have any bearing on the way we talk about time? To find out, the researchers showed the Pormpuraaws some pictures indicating a progression of events – photos of a person or crocodile at different ages, or a banana being consumed in stages. While seated, the subjects were repeatedly asked to arrange the photos in the correct temporal order, facing in a different direction each time. English speakers arrange time from left to right. Speakers of languages that are written from right to left, like Hebrew, Bororditsky says, arrange time from right to left.
But the Pormpuraaws depict time progression in an east-to-west direction. Facing south, the subjects arranged the time photos from left to right. Facing north, they arranged them right to left. Facing east, they arranged them toward the body. No one needed to tell them where east or west was. In other languages, Boroditsky adds, the past may be represented as above, while the future is below (as in Mandarin). “In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.”
What is true for time and space seems true as well for notions of causality. In some languages, accidents are attributed to no one, whereas in others, the doer who caused the accident is identified, what witnesses saw is important, and blame is assigned.
This reminds me of a story that Michel Foucault tells in an interview. A team of psychologists showed a short film about three characters to a village in Africa, and then asked the viewers to recount the film in their own words. They remembered nothing about the characters; only one thing engaged their attention: “the movement of the light and shadow through the trees.”
Language matters. We are formed by the language we speak. When we lose our language, we lose a part of ourselves. Ludwig Wittgenstein captured it so well in a crisp aphorism: “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
public.lives@gmail.com
August 19, 2010
Randy David
Language matters
It is that time of the year when we are prompted to revisit language issues in our society. In what language should we educate our children? What language should the government use to communicate with our people? What language should the courts in our country use? Is the bilingual policy that makes Filipino and English the official media of communication and instruction serving the national purpose? Are we doing enough to develop and enrich Filipino as the national language, as mandated by the Constitution? These issues have remained contentious and unresolved:
Even as languages evolve on their own, nations find themselves having to choose which languages best work for them as they pursue specific goals and purposes. As with persons, language preference ultimately mirrors a nation’s hierarchy of values. In the post-colonial years, especially in those societies marked by cultural diversity, the designation of a national language was thought crucial to the task of nation-building and political integration. Today, nations that have premised their growth on being able to ride the tide of globalization find little need to develop their own languages. They not only turn to English as the language of modernity; they also want to make it the lingua franca of their people.
This brings instant rewards to individuals who seek careers in the modern sector of the economy or in the global labor market. But for the majority who remain in the country, the costs are immense. Education becomes an alienating experience for schoolchildren, who cannot use their own language to create and access knowledge. Social inequalities are exacerbated. As English becomes a marker of class, a mechanism of exclusion, local languages are relegated to the margins of public discourse. Perhaps, most important of all, as we lose the use of our languages, we also break with our own basic orientations as a people. This is especially a problem for the English-speaking Filipino intelligentsia who find that increasingly they can neither understand nor communicate with their own people.
Recent research on the connection between language and ways of seeing and thinking provides new evidence for the thesis that language is not just a carrier but a shaper of thought. These studies, echoing the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, shift the analysis from the nature of the mind to the uses of language.
In an article for the Wall Street Journal (07/23/10), Dr. Lera Boroditsky, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, discusses recent field experiments that show how language structures not just the way we see but the way we solve problems and accumulate knowledge about the world. This is not a new idea at all. But Dr. Boroditsky has come up with new material to prove the point.
Language, she argues, shapes our notions of space, time, and causality. Such notions are not the same in all languages. “About a third of the world’s languages (spoken in all kinds of physical environments) rely on absolute directions for space.” Dr. Boroditsky and another colleague went to Australia to study the Pormpuraaw, an aboriginal group whose languages have no “terms like ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Instead, everything is talked about in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), which means you say things like, ‘There’s an ant on your southwest leg.” This astounding precision in the language for depicting space allows people like the Pormpuraaws to “build many other more complex or abstract representations including time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions.”
Does the way we talk about space have any bearing on the way we talk about time? To find out, the researchers showed the Pormpuraaws some pictures indicating a progression of events – photos of a person or crocodile at different ages, or a banana being consumed in stages. While seated, the subjects were repeatedly asked to arrange the photos in the correct temporal order, facing in a different direction each time. English speakers arrange time from left to right. Speakers of languages that are written from right to left, like Hebrew, Bororditsky says, arrange time from right to left.
But the Pormpuraaws depict time progression in an east-to-west direction. Facing south, the subjects arranged the time photos from left to right. Facing north, they arranged them right to left. Facing east, they arranged them toward the body. No one needed to tell them where east or west was. In other languages, Boroditsky adds, the past may be represented as above, while the future is below (as in Mandarin). “In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.”
What is true for time and space seems true as well for notions of causality. In some languages, accidents are attributed to no one, whereas in others, the doer who caused the accident is identified, what witnesses saw is important, and blame is assigned.
This reminds me of a story that Michel Foucault tells in an interview. A team of psychologists showed a short film about three characters to a village in Africa, and then asked the viewers to recount the film in their own words. They remembered nothing about the characters; only one thing engaged their attention: “the movement of the light and shadow through the trees.”
Language matters. We are formed by the language we speak. When we lose our language, we lose a part of ourselves. Ludwig Wittgenstein captured it so well in a crisp aphorism: “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
public.lives@gmail.com
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